Magic Mates 2

On the last day of May 2020 four super friends gathered around a blue pool table in a single garage in Martinborough to fight over who would receive the title of champion. The game was Magic the gathering and this would be the second time the title was up for grabs.

The first time this happened was back in January of 2020 and when we dreamt up this series of games we had no idea it would happen as often as it has. January saw Troy claim the first title of Champion. He has been a long time friend of mine and helped me learn the game (and learn the game himself) a few years ago when we decided we were going to dive into this trading card game. From 2016 till today we have had many games of magic over his dining room table. He secured the win for the first series with an epic play that I won’t soon forget. Troys timely play of the card Teferi’s Protection as I was about to destroy him in the final game in Jan saw me take dead last as I swung in with too many creatures to protect myself the following turn. I didn’t see this coming. I knew my mistake was over confidence but it was too late.

“No plan survives first contact with the enemy” - Graf Helmuth Karl Bernhard von Moltke

Paul, Troy and Neil had carefully constructed new decks since Jan with completely different strategies. Paul came in with an Artifact heavy deck which synergized well with his Planeswalker commander Sahelli to create colourless mana batteries in which to ramp up to the late game. He used the infect mechanic to threaten our health pools should we leave ourselves open to attack. I feel like he could have utilized infect greater in the mid game with mono red cards that pumped up his infect creatures and gave them menace or double strike (or both). Neil used an Esper deck with heavy life replenishment that saw his life total get well into the 50’s before any of us were in a position to reduce it. Neils deck lacked enough Flyers to stop me taking command of the combat phase but had sweet shenanigans in the form of tutoring our Sorin and other things that straight reduced a players life to 10. His deck had great synergy, it will be hard for him to figure out where his deck failed him I suspect. I think it may have had something to do with the fact that Neils big plays could be and were used against him which also happened in the first series. Troy brought a homebrewed Golgari deck centered around big creatures with great late game application and big credit to him for bringing something he’d put together from his own collection. It was well known to all of us that nobody was going to win the competition twice in a row so Troy was target number one. If there was ever a better time to bring a deck you weren’t 100% sure about then this was it. I had spent around $200 on singles to improve my five colour Dragon tribal deck and I’m happy to say it produced some satisfying results. It wasn’t over powered but once it gets going it's very hard to stop. My 5 colour deck worked well and I have Peter at Calico Keep in Paraparaumu to thank for sitting down and helping me construct it. As with the first series the decider came in the fifth match. This was the game my deck really showed me (and the others) what it could do. The sky above was darkened with monstrous Dragons and the title was within reach. All I had to do was to choose who died first and who died last.